Sisters' Stories

Lima, Peru -- Latin American women comprise one-fifth of the region´s farmers, but they face inequalities such as obstacles to land ownership, loans and farming supplies, putting a crimp in food production, according to a new report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO.

According to its State of Food and Agriculture 2010-11 report “Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development,” published on March 7, women farmers work more temporary or seasonal jobs and with lower income compared with their male counterparts.

ONGATA RONGAI, KENYA -- In the cool early morning hours of Jan. 14, I was awakened by piercing screams. Again and again, the women screamed.

I did not know it then, but gunmen had broken into the complex of the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary, an African order of Catholic sisters where I was spending the night.

When the men came to her door and demanded money, Sr. Levina Kalikwela grabbed a small, gold-veneered framed picture of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus.

“They entered and I held it,” the sister told me the next day, standing in her destroyed bedroom. “I said, ‘God, we’re finished,’ And I just held it lake this.” She grasped the picture in both hands and held it over her head.

The men hit the picture with their knife, breaking it, Kalikwela told me.

“They were asking me,” said Kalikwela, her voice cracking. “And I was telling them I have no money. I have no money.”

The recent appointment of an American archbishop to the Vatican office overseeing a wide-ranging investigation of U.S. nuns has the sisters and their supporters breathing a little easier.

Archbishop Joseph Tobin has already acknowledged the “anger and hurt” among U.S. nuns caused by the probe in his new role as the secretary, or No. 2 official, of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Tobin, who grew up in Detroit, has said he will work to heal any rifts between American sisters and the Catholic hierarchy in Rome. He also hopes to lift a shroud of secrecy surrounding the probe.

“We’re very excited by his appointment,” said Sr. Mary Ann Flannery, director of the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma, Ohio. “He’s coming from an American culture that believes you have a right to defend yourself, a right to have your voice heard.”

The investigation, officially known as an “apostolic visitation,” is meant to “look into the quality of life” in sisters’ religious communities, according to the Vatican.

ROME -- Rome must acknowledge the “depth of anger and hurt” provoked by a visitation of American nuns, the Vatican’s number two official for religious life has said, saying it illustrates the need for a “strategy of reconciliation” with women religious.

Archbishop Joseph Tobin, Secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said that he does not expect any “punitive” fallout from the visitation, and that before any decisions are made, women’s communities should have a chance to know the results and to respond.

VATICAN CITY -- In his latest book, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed that the church has "no authority" to ordain women as priests and rejected the idea that the rule was formed only because the church originated in a patriarchal society.

Her piano is surrounded by folders of musical works in progress. All are important to her, but one in particular stirs her soul. Acclaimed composer Elizabeth Swados, like many people around the world, was touched deeply by the rape and murder of four American churchwomen in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980. Their stories of faith and commitment forever altered her consciousness and now, for the 30th anniversary of their deaths, she is composing an oratorio that will remember the tragedy while celebrating the positive changes it brought about.

Isabel Legarda was only 8 years old when the abduction, rape and shooting death of four American churchwomen 30 years ago in El Salvador drew the world’s attention to the tiny Central American country, raised questions about U.S. support for rightist forces there, and inspired a movement of religious activism.

At least three groups have organized delegations of pilgrims to El Salvador to mark the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of U.S. churchwomen Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan on Dec. 2, 1980, and to honor their lives and legacy.

Writer/director Margarethe Von Trotta’s new film, “Vision: From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen,” is a filmed version of the life of a thoroughly “renaissance” woman who was born and lived during the Middle Ages. Hildegard of Bingen was born near Worms, Germany, around the year 1098 and died in Bingen on the Rhine in 1179.